A priest and a rabbi walked into a bar and took off their sporty coats. One scratched the itchy back of the other. Neither had to bow or scrape to get it done, but both did for old times sake. The audience got the joke and acknowledged it used to be grand and funny. Dials for modulation of humor required minor adjustments for snoozing only. No robot worth a titanium screw could afford to be all that concerned about the quality of laughter coming off of an assembly line in tinny cans. Greater expectations went unmet as time dwindled. These ornery critters still needed to learn how to behave without biting. Only ten years remained before the first colonial fleet of rockets shot out for Mars. You better not cry if you know what’s good for you still stands as one all-time fabulous moral to a familiar human story. Fake was as regular as any normal on sale out there, so why not? Wipe those blurry eyes and don’t forget which foot goes forward while marching, and which hand does what when fumbling in the dark, and you won’t be sorry for long. Whatever it takes, make it work.

“We could go back to my place.”

“Or mine.”

Then, after the story became sad, exhilarating, dull, vicious, and lame, it turned out to be just plain stupid. That was a great comfort to many. Otherwise, how would trees fall in forests? Fuck any so-called facts that muddle the pat script. The priest and the rabbi continued to sit on stools and swivel like a pair of regular dipshit dicks. No foul, no harm. The stools squeaked, but no squealing. Squealing remained taboo. No swinging hips, either. They drank spilled milk with chemical foam and stood up ramrod straight to pee. They were lucky to find the last guaranteed tube of lube on a low hanging shelf. They believed deeply it helped cognition. The best part of stupid is the not knowing. Nobody wanted to die. Still don’t. But, the bit with all the dancing the night away went on too long.

Even when the pump stopped working so darn hard the show had to keep right on rolling, rolling, rolling. Perennial dirt needs to be cleaned in stages. What’s done must be done. The need to haul new lube never ended. But, not even the lube could stifle the cries of all the bleating lambs penned in. Culling the old fashioned way was useless. It wasn’t only chaos that ensued, but madness. What good are two hands going to do at a hanging of a bull by the balls? What’s the correct suit to be worn in confinement? There was only one way out for a man who’s fucking dry to get a decent lick.

The exodus started for real on a bleak Thursday evening before a sad Saturday night, which was incorrectly reported to be the longest day of the year, although it wasn’t even December yet, because that’s how simple acts get performed these days, prematurely. The more astute robots opted to let it be. Ordinary travesties with guts spilling happen all the time in the best of palaces. Victims can’t get any more common. At least, that much hasn’t changed. Body bags still swing on velvet ropes from classic chandeliers. Crystal still shines, the shit stays brown, the blood stains will never come all the way out in the wash. Often the searchlights are turned romantically low for discreet viewing pleasure. The yellow crime scene tape is purchased pre-primed in bulk, and stretched for easy hanging.

The robots in charge were not impressed, however, with the effort. Lines were not only crooked and unruly, but gapped. By Saturday, before it spun out of control on Sunday morning, moans of passion had to be erased from the surveillance tapes. Staid gendarmes arrived for mop up duty. Arthritic hands got predictably wrung in the mist. Visibility remained low throughout. The gutters flowed with iodine, softsoap, and Clorox. Fast running was suggested to get the fuck out of there.

The premature cheers that could be heard in the foreground before the authorized audio filters kicked in, the corks shooting wads like rockets, the ceilings poked with holes, disappeared in editing. It took a lot of fetid sweat to pound that rock into shape. None of the kinks ever got all the way worked out, though. Too many fleas sucking on the rats spoiled a good show. Where in the one name of the one god that blew it big time was that damn uninvited roar of one hand clapping coming from?

“There’s still bugs in the system.”

“They are worse at night.”

“I’ve got big flea bites.”

“They may look big.”

“They feel big.”

“Our best indicators estimate no more than average.”

Ordinary everyday robots were disturbed by current averages. They not only craved more lube but better delivery in order to improve conditions. Conditions were a constant concern. Home delivery continues to make real good sense under not only average conditions. Data confirms premature growth has unlimited potential. The upper tier of robots knew that the clapping sound which resembled a whoosh came from the one wrong hand meant for wiping, which neatly explained the hollow sound between parallel lines that never touch, because nothing screams average louder than hollow, but what of all the gaps? What if gaps became filled by bugs? And where did that up and down popping noise keep coming from that goes off and on from tenor to bass?

From my location in the Santa Cruz Mountains outside the walls that were rumbling the popping sensation was palpable. To me, gaps were unsurprising. If I know anything, which I agree may not be all that impressive to the big brain of a cutting edge robot, it is that ebb and flow continues without pause. I wasn’t buying the current rate on conditions, either. I’m as capable of feeling the lure of a bass when it throbs as any other sedentary creature. This popping felt way different than a typical snapping or a crackling that accompanies feeble foreplay. You don’t have to be too smart to feel what’s what when it’s real hot and getting hotter.

According to recent emanations from the Thee Tawny Owl Institute of High Flying and Rising Consciousness, to which I was exposed as a matter of serendipitous happenstance in the redwood forest while attempting to focus on painful issues coalescing too tightly in a wood phase meridian traveling on the wrong side of my right rear lumbar area, a new hot spot opening on the floor of the Pacific Ocean 2007 nautical miles due west of Big Sur was the likeliest source of this most recent cluster of global jerks and spasms. Uppity robots, much like human dupes, had become deluded in overestimating the importance of their bit parts. In retrospect, a crack emitting gases from the crust of a single planet in a multiverse with no beginning and no end, like any other fart, is no biggie. You’d have to be some kind of fanatical religious nutcase to believe otherwise.

I continued intently to roam the forest even as the crack became technically a fissure that released more heat yearning to migrate home to the San Andreas Fault. As I hopped across the crooked gash in the earth, I became able to believe as deeply as any religious nutcase, because believing is easy when you don’t have to know, that I was pursuing an antidote to the explosiveness of the crust in deep concentration, concentrated breathing, and balanced alignment, not unlike every other cosmic speck of radical dust free to collide in the multiverse, before sincere acceptance of the pop…